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hjoutfbkfd 3 hours ago

when you inplement a quick sort, do you credit Hoare in the comments?

jakkos 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, in the same way that I wouldn't cite Euler every time I used one of his theorems - because it's so well known that its history is well documented in countless places.

However, if I was using a more recent/niche/unknown theorem, it would absolutely be considered bad practice not to cite where I got it from.

OJFord 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I was implementing any known (named) algorithm intentionally I think I would absolutely say so in a comment (`// here we use quick sort to...` and maybe why it's the choice) and then it's easy for someone to look up and see it's due to Hoare or whoever on Wikipedia etc.

antirez 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Now many will downvote you because this is an algorithm and not some code. But the reality is that programming is in large part built looking at somebody else code / techniques, internalizing them, and reproducing them again with changes. So actually it works like that for code as well.